Great to see Tom Mc get an award, and the Demon Barbers.
In fact, it was quite refreshing to see that the Usual Suspects, such as the Waterson:Carthy clan and the Rusbys and Bellowhead (as worthy as all of them are), not getting a look in this year.

However, the cynic in me suspects that it was more to do with "It's not their turn this year" and "We need to find somebody different".

Somebody asked what was the relevance....

Well, there seems to have been a huge amount of coverage on both radio and TV this year. The Awards keep getting mentioned on daytime Radio 2. Even the lovely Sally Traffic was bemoaning the fact that she couldn't get there because of the snow, and what a great occasion it was.

People are talking about it in glowing terms, and not in the usual snidy piss-taking way that the media usually refers to folk.

I detect a real sea-change in attitudes. Also, in the PRS magazine, which did a New year roundup and interviewed a lot of movers and shakers in the Music Industry, it was surprtising to see how many of them cited 'folk' as the Next Big Thing!

Now, those of us who have been around long enough to have seen this all before, will know that this can be a double-edged sword.
But, you either want the Media to recognise the 'folk' part of the industry and to take it seriously, or you don't, and prefer to wallow in our normal obscurity.

You can't have it both ways.

Graham